After hundreds of hours of work, couture designer Robert Wun takes a lighter to his pieces

A smoker himself, Wun was inspired to use fire as a sartorial technique after seeing the accidental cigarette burns he created in his own clothes. (Phil Clarke Hill/CNN via CNN Newsource)

When couture designer Robert Wun was nominated for the 2022 Andam Fashion Awards, a prestigious French honour for emerging talent previously won by Martin Margiela and Christophe Lemaire, he went to Paris for the ceremony purely as a formality. Convinced he wouldn’t win, Wun stood at the very back of the room, nursing his drink, and barely registered when his own name was called out (albeit in French) as the recipient of the Prix Spécial, the competition’s runner-up prize, which comes with a cash reward of almost US$120,000. It took his team two minutes to find Wun in the crowd of attendees and ferry him onto the stage.

When reeling off his accolades — which include becoming the first Hong-Kong-born designer to be part of Paris’ exclusive haute couture schedule, designing costumes for The Royal Ballet, and dressing Lady Gaga, Adele, Beyoncé and Björk — this anecdote is at risk of sounding like faux-modesty. But for years Wun felt unsupported in his chosen industry, and the idea of formal recognition had slowly begun to feel like a pipe dream.

Despite living, studying and working in London for the past 15 years, Wun has never shown on the city’s official fashion week schedule. “I never really got any institutional support or endorsement,” he said. “All the British or London-based designers that people can name,” Wun said, “they all came from a certain type of system, an umbrella.” After graduating from a degree in womenswear at London College of Fashion in 2012, Wun’s designs were spotted by Hong Kong fashion retailer Joyce Boutique. He launched his eponymous label in 2014.

Wun applied for grants, schemes and emerging designer showcases hosted by the British Fashion Council (BFC) from 2014 until 2018 — when he was deemed ineligible because his business had reached three years old. He never received the “stamp of approval” and permission to “carry on to be a professional,” he said. “I think what happened was I was stubborn enough to keep doing it. And I think essentially it got to a point that I also stopped searching for that approval too.”

His first taste of validation came many years into his career, when judges at the Andam Awards told him how much they had to deliberate between first and second place. “That was the first time I felt like I am actually good enough,” said Wun.

Today, he is a fully fledged couturier, operating at the highest level of craft in the industry and is about to have his work exhibited in London for the first time. On the day we meet in late August, the east London studio he has worked in for the last eight years is hot from the ironing machine used to press the fabric and patterns that will eventually become one-of-a-kind pieces. Mannequins are dressed in full looks ready to be couriered to the Barbican, where they will be displayed in a new exhibition titled “Dirty Looks,” on the contemporary fashion designers embracing decay, deterioration and imperfection, opening on 25 September. Outside, the studio’s unassuming brick facade — currently covered in scaffolding — makes it hard to believe that dresses costing up to £150,000 (around US$200,000) are produced here.

Even Wun himself says he didn’t envision his career this way. It was Chanel’s president of fashion Bruno Pavlovsky who suggested that Wun’s designs, which are meticulously custom-made, should be presented at Paris Haute Couture Week — the only showcase of luxury handcrafted fashion in the world — instead of ready-to-wear. “It was not my idea to be in couture,” Wun said. “It never even crossed my mind.”

It is not a recommendation to be taken lightly, either. No brand can call their work haute couture unless the French Ministry of Industry and the Federation de la Haute Couture et de la Mode (FHCM), the country’s governing body representing the fashion industry, says so. And fashion houses looking to be approved must first have their application sponsored by an FHCM board member. Pavlovsky’s amplification of Wun’s work led to his couture debut — and first runway show in 10 years — in 2023, which he had just two months to prepare for. The collection was aptly titled “Fear.”

“I was so scared. I didn’t know how everything was going to come together, where we were going to find PR, the location, the production, the model casting, everything,” he said. “I remember I was just really designing out of those honest, raw emotions.” Rather than acting as a creative block, Wun’s lingering insecurity and terror that he would mess up this opportunity became his inspiration for the clothes. “It came from the idea of, what if everything went wrong?”

He created a white silk dress with a dramatic train, elbow gloves and face-obscuring hat splattered with red wine, the offending wine glass wielded as a prop on the runway. In his “scorched bride” look, a pristine ivory wedding dress and veil is turned to Swiss cheese with burn holes, which Wun said he created with a mixture of incense sticks, lighters and cigarettes (as well as 3D printing techniques for some faux scorch marks, to make sure key seams wouldn’t unravel). It’s a technique he would go on to explore, including in a yellow 1970s-style pleated suit that will be exhibited at the Barbican. Yet despite these pieces only being affordable for the 1%, their messaging is universal. Anyone who wears clothes — whether they cost tens of thousands of pounds or fifty — can relate to this fear of destruction, and appreciate the subversive beauty Wun has created. “It just clicks with every single person,” he said.

Having his work displayed this month alongside idols such as Alexander McQueen is a “full circle moment,” he said. It was at the Barbican back in 2008 where Wun, then still a student, experienced a fashion exhibition for the first time. The showcase explored the work of Dutch designing duo Viktor & Rolf — couturiers, like Wun, who are also alumni of the Andam Prize. “It still sticks in my head how that show was created, how cinematic it looked,” he said. “It feels very special to be included.”

Seventeen years later, perhaps a young fashion student will see Wun’s designs at the Barbican and start to imagine their own future in the industry. For that newcomer, Wun’s years of self-doubt and stubborn determination can be distilled into some choice wisdom: “Don’t ever let yourself feel that you need to be a certain type of person in order to fit in,” he said. “Offer something uniquely yours, and be passionate about it. Never let that fire go away.”